Luke 24:1-12

What is the strangest thing you have ever heard about that was true?

Earlier this week, I received several emails from family and friends in the UK.  They were excited that the city of Hamilton had made world headlines, and included a link to the story as published on the BBC news website.  The link as it appeared on my computer included a series of numbers, with no clear indication of what the story was actually about.  One email asked me whether this might make it into my Easter sermon, followed by a series of exclamation marks.

In the few seconds it took for the story to download, I fired up my imagination about what it could possibly be about?  Hamilton doesn’t make international headlines every day, so it must be impressive.  I frequently use the #lovethetron on Twitter, and proudly so.  I thought ahead to how I would promote this story about the city we live in.

Then the story appeared, and I sat looking at a photo of a rather beautiful and somewhat pleased looking Hamilton cat called Brigit, with the headline ‘New Zealand ‘cat burglar’ caught stealing men’s underwear’.

Now I know why my friend’s challenge to make this part of my Easter sermon was followed by multiple exclamation marks!

I read on: in 2 months, six-year-old Tonkinese cat Brigit from Hamilton city brought back 11 pairs of underpants and more than 50 socks.  Brigit’s owner had clearly positioned the cat in the midst of the haul, and the cat looked rather approving of all the publicity. 

Easter sermon?  I thought to myself: how?  I thought about it for a brief (!) second – and got as far as the general Gospel theme of what was lost is now found, what had gone astray had been reunited, what was missing is now whole again.  Then I spent a few moments on the Gospel according to Google to track down some information about the cat Brigit’s name-sake, St Brigid of Kildare in Ireland, who was born in the year 451.  As a child she apparently was very keen to help those less fortunate than herself, and once gave away her mother’s entire stock of butter, which was miraculously replenished by prayer just before her mother found out.  Admittedly that is a rather tenuous link, missing butter rather than missing clothing.  Brigid also happens to be the patron saint of dairy workers, possibly helpful in this time of uncertainty in the rural economy.  I even stopped to consider that mysterious story in Mark’s version of the Holy Week narrative – the young man who runs away naked – maybe one of Brigit’s feline forebears was responsible?

But running the distinct risk of getting rather carried away, I thought I better stop as I would like you to take away from today more than a sermon about missing laundry.  I can well imagine: what did the Bishop preach about?  Missing underpants.  True, but there is method in the madness here, if you will bear with me!

Which leads me to the question posed at the beginning: what is the strangest thing you have heard about that was in fact true?

In our Gospel reading, please note the apostles’ reaction to the women who brought them news about the empty tomb and the encounter they had had with the men in dazzling white?

‘These words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.’

But sure enough, and being a rather curious and adventurous type, Peter went for a closer look and saw for himself the linen cloths that had been wrapped around Jesus’ lifeless body, without the body.

 

What seemed unbelievable was real.

 

But note also that if you keep reading Luke’s Gospel after this point, we have the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, who initially fail to recognise Jesus in the stranger who joins them on their journey.  It is only later, in the evening, when in the breaking of the bread their eyes are opened and they see Jesus again.

There are many headlines in our country and in our world that seem so impossible and hard to bear, that are brutally true; this is especially true in the light of the terror attacks this week in Brussels.  This makes preaching the good news about the resurrection today all the more challenging yet all the more urgent.  But we would be wrong if we thought that Jesus’ context was any less brutal than our own global situation today.  Indeed crucifixion was the most horrid form of Roman torture, and the most shameful.  Jesus’ death on the cross was agonising.  We cannot airbrush that out of the story.  And yet also, we would be misguided if we assumed that Easter was all about the cross or the empty tomb.  It is more than that.

In order to get to the Cross we journey in discipleship; by that I mean, each of us in our daily lives walks the way of the Cross.  Whether we recognise that fully or not, whether we consciously engage with what that means or not, does not matter.   What matters is that we hold to the truth that death does not have the last word; love is stronger than death; and life itself in all its forms, more to be valued if seen in the new light of the resurrected Christ.

The resurrection of Jesus does not begin or end in economic transaction or in the bounds of supermarket advertising: with shoppers competing to secure the chocolate egg of choice from rapidly clearing shelves. 

Our understanding of the resurrection is grounded in a religious context that is thousands of years old, and carries a deep connection to the Jewish observation of the festival of Passover: the story of the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt.  All those events happened a long time ago, in a context very different from our own.  So where and how do we begin to understand and articulate a radical belief in God who raised Jesus from the dead?  What difference does it make to our city, to our region?  In our world of deep scientific exploration and the need for certainty, there is little room for mystery, wonder and events that turn everything upside down.  But perhaps the challenge lies ahead rather than a focus on the mechanics of the empty tomb: there was no 24-hr news coverage after all.  It’s what we do with it now that really matters.  As we leave this place, we literally begin again.

‘Beginning’ is a good place to start, because although the resurrection might be viewed as the triumphal climax to the story of Jesus, in actual fact, it marks more of a beginning than an ending.  Alistair McGrath describes how the need to see things afresh, from the beginning, has been an important theme throughout history.  In order to appreciate something for how it really is, we need to empty our minds and remove memories of things we already know.  If we can do that, then we can allow ourselves to be taken by surprise when a beginning takes place, especially when that is something routine that we would otherwise take for granted.   We might then be better prepared when someone tells us something so strange we find it hard to believe it.  We might be more able to share that news with others whom we meet.

The power of the resurrection lies not only in the fact of it having happened, but rather in its reaffirmation of life in a world where God is now set loose and everything is turned upside down.  Through Jesus’ birth, God enabled a connection between the ordinary and the extraordinary – something far more profound that the display of objects from the past alone can ever hope to express.  Through the cross and resurrection, God affirmed a hope in humanity that brought us through the shadow of death into an eternal light, a hope that will defiantly have the last word in the face of terror and anxiety.

If we take hold of the hope, then we have good news for the journey.  If we allow the joy of Easter to enfold every fibre of our being, then we have strength to hold and to share when the road becomes difficult.  And that is not an idle tale, it is the most incredible truth ever known.

 

Alleluia, Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed, alleluia!